My gaze automatically went to our joined hands. I sucked in a breath at his public display of affection.

Axel had never held my hand. He never came near me when people were around... not like we were ever really around people anyhow, but this surprising action left me completely speechless.

Axel used his hold on my hand to pull me close to his chest and he pushed his free hand through my hair. Our dark gazes collided and he whispered, “We need to go upstairs to check on Molly. We need to meet Lexi and Austin. Don’t do this, just leave it alone.”

Water filled my eyes at how calm and accepting he was at the way people regarded him without even knowing him. I couldn’t bear it. He was worth so much more than people thought. Yes, he had the gang tattoos. He looked, to most people, sinister and dark, but he was so much more than the armor he wore. I wanted to scream from the rooftops that he was so so much more! He was creative, artistic… and even though he tried to portray himself otherwise, he was a good man who cared for his own.

He cared… somehow I had to make him realize it too. I had to crack open the high wall he had built around him.

Wanting to wrap my arms around his neck and hold him close, I resisted. “But they shouldn’t be allowed to take one look at you and judge you as a danger. They can’t do that! It’s not fair!”

Axel's eyes closed momentarily and he inhaled. “Ally,” he said as he breathed out slowly, “Fuck them. Let them follow us. They’re nothing to me… I’m used to it.”

As a tear fell over my cheek at this injustice, I let Axel lead me away, staring up at his expressionless face as his fingers tightly held mine.

He was so used to being looked down upon by anyone outside his gang, that he didn’t bat an eyelid when it happened, even when it was so uncalled for. At that moment I understood this closed off man just a little more.

He didn’t know how to be in this everyday world.

He was brought up in a no good trailer park on the wrong side of town. He was the eldest son to a drunken and abusive papa who hit him and his mother regularly. He joined the Heighters as a child because that’s all that was available to him at the time… but he was a child for fuck's sake! Conditioned to live their way... he’d made mistakes, big mistakes. I got that; still couldn’t wrap my head around most of it. But he’d served his time. He’d survived being a target, attacked in prison for abandoning his gang to save his brothers. His brothers who had no idea what he’d endured to make sure they could escape their shit lives and be free. And despite all that, this lost man life had been so unfair to, had found his calling and completely changed his life with the simple tools of a hammer and chisel.

He’d influenced so many lives already with his art… including mine. He couldn’t see it yet, but he’d completely changed my life in every conceivable way.

This man, clutching my hand like a vise to save me from getting in trouble in his defense, deserved people to give him a chance. I was enraged that he accepted so casually people’s blatant dismissive and hostile behavior toward him.

Grinding my feet to a stop, my emotions forfeiting my logic, I glanced behind and realized that the security guards were no longer trailing us. Axel had stopped too, his attention still forward focused but I could see his jaw working underneath his beard. I could see his neck muscles straining in anger.

“Why do you let people treat you that way?” I asked, hearing the cutting edge fueling my voice.

Axel’s lower neck muscles bunched, his traps and thick arms seeming to increase in size as his eyes squeezed shut. He blew a slow calming breath through his nostrils, his olive skin flushing with red.

When he didn’t say anything in reply, I added, “It’s not fair how they look at you. Because you look this way, they assume you’re a gangbanger who’s going to cause nothing but trouble. It makes me sick!” He still didn’t respond, so I stepped closer to him and made him look into my eyes. “Why are you staying silent? Say something, Goddammit! Why are you not saying a damn word?”

Axel’s hand became bruising in mine. With a frustrated grunt, he spun, dragging me along the empty hallway, until he stopped in front of a door with the sign ‘Store Room.’

Turning the doorknob, he pulled me through and released my hand. He began to pace the floor. I watched him carefully, but adrenaline was still pumping wildly in my blood.

Running a hand over my face, I asked, “Why are we in here?”

Axel stopped dead and, spinning to face me, his face contorting in rage, he reached over my shoulder to the door and snapped the lock shut.

Using his chest, he pushed me back against a set of metal shelves. “You don’t think I care?” he hissed low.

I swallowed… I’d pushed him to his breaking point.

“You don’t think every time one of those cunts, like those asshole guards, looks at me like I’m nothing more than trash, I don’t wanna turn around and fuck them up? Because I do! I fucking hate everyone. I hate people and their fucking ‘I’m above you’ attitudes, the ‘this guy is gonna hurt me’ opinion of me when they see me walking down the street. I have an anger inside of me that I’m pretty fucking sure will never leave, an anger if unleashed it on fuckers like that, I’d end up killing. And I would kill them, I know it. I wouldn’t be able to stop. ‘Cause that’s what I’ve been fighting my whole life, assholes like that! Judging me and fucking wanting me to fail, to disappear so I wouldn’t be society’s problem anymore.”